Except for a few movies and series that I like watching over and over, I don't buy a lot of DVDs. Occasionally, I'll come across a DVD is the bargain bin somewhere of a movie that I haven't seen so, not knowing whether it's available online or not, I might buy it. But I am not in the habit of collecting DVDs. I do however, subscribe to the 4-DVD option with Netflix because not everything is available via streaming. Since I can usually turn around four DVDs in a day, there is a constant string of them coming in, otherwise it may not be worth it. I don't have a DVD player. I bought a Blueray player a while back but it never worked well, and quit working at all not long after I bought it, so I use my iMac and a third monitor to play the DVDs. One thing I have noticed though, is that while I could pretty much put any DVD into my DVD player and have it play, my iMac is awfully picky about DVDs. At least one in three DVDs that I get from Netflix won't play on my iMac. It will start skipping over what it reports to be damaged portions, and then fail. That wasn't the case when I had a DVD player. Instead, I have to eject it, spray some cleaner on it and clean it. Then it will usually play without complaining about damaged areas. Now when I get a DVD from Netflix, I will clean it before even putting it into the DVD slot, and that usually works.
I have a collection of DVDs and my five disc player started giving me the same error. I have kept a smaller one that I have as a back up. I miss not being able to continuously watch movies. Getting up and switching disc tends to kill my feeling to watch movies. I rarely buy new DVDs anymore. I get them at the flea market for a couple of bucks. I've gotten pretty good at determining the condition of the discs before I buy. Once I bought one and didn't check the case and it was empty. My grandson always reminds me of that mistake. My sons buy me blu-rays for the more recent movies. I won't buy those because they are too pricey.
We used to get the mailed Netflix movies many years ago when we were still in Idaho; but now we don't have a DVD player, so we only watch movies that we can stream or rent. Occasionally, we do buy a movie when it is one we enjoy watching more than once; but mostly, just being able to stream the movie and watch it does the job for us. I actually seldom even watch movies anymore, but Bobby watches movies and television programs every day, and mostly he watches ones that he can watch on Netflix. We actually have the premium channels on our DirecTV for the next couple of months; but i don't think that Bobby has even checked the channels to see if there were movies or programs that he wanted to watch. Mostly, he just watches either Fox News, or the local channels on the television, and then watches movies on his iPad. Either way, we really do not miss having a DVD player.
It seems odd that my computer would be so much more sensitive to dirt or flaws in the DVD than a DVD player would, is all.
I have a combination VCR and DVD player along with a small collection of my favorite movies on both VCR and DVD. I found that cleaning the DVD's with a baby wipe worked just fine and doesn't seem to harm my DVD player either. Since I am very careful with my things and usually am the only one to use them, I don't have a problem with my systems. But when babysitting my grandchildren when they were smaller, their fingerprints, etc. were all over the DVD's and I always had to clean them before putting them in the player...that's when I first thought of using a baby wipe to clean them and all these years later they still work great for this. Because my daughter allowed her little ones to "play" with the DVD player...she went through a few of them really fast. So I would say DVD players are more sensitive, especially if you have little hands trying to use them.
I also don't buy many DVDs or Blu-ray disks these days. I do have a small collection or movies and boxed sets that I will watch periodically. They really came in handy last month when my AT&T was down for a three-day period. I don't have much of an issue with scratches or damaged portions, because most of the ones I have were bought new, but I will occasionally purchase one on eBay used, or at the local pawn shop, and those I do sometimes have to clean off before using. I have an older dvd player up here, but I don't use it because it doesn't have the same connections as the television, which only has HDMI inputs, so I typically only watch DVDs/Blu-rays when I'm downstairs and using the Blu-ray player.
@Diane Lane there are HDMI converter boxes that are for connecting to an older box television. I purchased one Sunday. It uses the green, blue and red (video) and red and white (audio) cords and the HDMI connector as opposed to the yellow (video), red and white (audio). The sound was perfect but I couldn't get the video part to come in though. I need to do a little more research to find out why. I also trashed my 5 disc DVD player that I mentioned it wouldn't read my DVD lense cleaner disc. I also think that the type of device might be the problem because it's a more advanced DVD player and it works great on my HD set with just the colored cord and HDMI connectors. So it looks like I have to find a DVD player that does not have HDMI for my box set. I'm sure I'll find one on Ebay.
I'll have a look when I get some money. I'll probably just buy a blu-ray with streaming capabilities when I get some funds, that way I can stream Netflix and Hulu (if I keep it), as well as Vudu and Amazon for individual movie and show rentals, as well as watching my DVDs. I have the older Blu-ray downstairs, but it doesn't get Vudu, and YouTube doesn't work on that anymore, so if I do get a newer one, I might swap that one out with the downstairs one, since I can use the Roku up here on one of the TVs. Hope you get one that works for you. Ebay's definitely the place to look.
We have a number of Blu-Ray and regular DVD's.........movies, documentaries and music. Some years ago, I transferred any VCR recordings onto DVD's. At that time, we had a new DVD Player/Recorder hooked up to our tv. We also had my MIL's VCR, so I hooked that up to the DVD Player/Recorder. Don't remember exactly how I did it, but ended up transferring all of our VCR recordings onto DVD's. Got rid of the VCR after doing that. Along with that DVD Player/Recorder, we also had a COMCAST DVR to record tv programs on and bought a Blu-Ray Player. After we got the Blu-Ray Player, we started buying Blu-Ray DVD's that were on sale. Some of those tv programs we recorded on the DVR, we ended up putting on DVD's using the DVD Player/Recorder. When the DVD Player/Recorder "bit the dust", we bought a used one from e-bay (same brand/type). A power outage ended up blowing that out. What we really wanted was a better Blu-Ray Player than we had. So, we unhooked and stored the Blu-Ray Player we had and bought a new "up-to-date" Blu-Ray Player that had a connection to the Internet on it. Our Blu-Ray DVD's looking amazing on it and we can also watch things on u-Tube as well as see what is on Amazon for sale. This new player also shows our photo's on USB's extremely good as well. One thing my wife is totally grateful for, concerning me, is that I'm really kind of electronically "techy". I hooked up our Sound Bar, Blu-Ray Player and Wii Game with no trouble.
Speaking of @Cody Fousnaugh being electronically 'techy', I'm definitely not that way. I can hook something up, and then if I turned around and someone unhooked the components I'd just plugged in, I'd get confused and probably wouldn't be able to replicate what i'd just done. Because of that, I've learned to keep my tablet handy, and before I unhook anything, I take a picture of the connections, so if the new process doesn't work, I can always reconnect the plugs that way they were before I messed with them. Also, I will sometimes have a friend troubleshoot for me via computer or phone, and it helps to shoot him a picture or two, so he knows what he's dealing with, and can help me figure out how to proceed.